10.00am: Good morning and welcome to our live blog politics coverage! Tom McCarthy here in New York and here's where things stand:

• A televised remark by a Democratic strategist that Ann Romney, the wife of Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney and mother of his five children, has "never worked a day in her life" has created a cyclone of indignation. Ann Romney started a Twitter account and said raising five kids was work, thank you very much. The Obama campaign is on the defensive.

I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.

•Ann Romney will appear on television soon to talk about her husband's plan for women and the economy, and to discuss the remarks of the Democratic strategist, Hilary Rosen. The kerfuffle follows a Washington Post/ABC News poll earlier this week showing Obama with a 19-point lead over Romney among women.

•The Obama campaign has produced a video marking the sixth anniversary of Mitt Romney's Massachusetts health care plan, signed into law on April 12, 2006. This is an attempt to preempt attacks on Obama's health care plan. We'll post the video momentarily.

•President Obama will honor NASCAR champ Tony Stewart and other drivers in a White House ceremony. Will Danica Patrick be there? And will there be photos?

10.28am: My colleague Ryan Devereaux has been looking into the Rosen brouhaha in more depth.

Barack Obama's senior advisers went into damage control mode immediately after Hilary Rosen's CNN appearance last night, with campaign manager Jim Messina and top strategist David Axelrod both taking to Twitter.

Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen's comments about Ann Romney.They were inappropriate and offensive.

As the battle warms up between Obama and Romney over whose policies are better for women, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act has taken center stage.

Signed by President Obama, the law makes it easier for women to sue in equal pay cases. When asked about Romney's position on the act in a conference call on Wednesday, his top policy aides seemed unsure how to respond. The law is opposed by elements of the conservative base Romney seeks to please. The Romney campaign eventually released a statement saying he supports the radical notion of pay equity. The Democrats wasted no time in seizing on the opportunity to release citing Ledbetter's "shocked and disappointed" reaction to the controversy.

Romney's strategy for taking the president to task on women's issues includes arguing that women have suffered disproportionately under current White House policies, particularly in terms of job losses.

On Tuesday and Wednesday the former governor repeatedly cited the figure 92.3% figure, which he says it represents women's share of all the jobs lost since the president's inauguration in January 2009. But it turns out that's not quite accurate. Though women have lost a considerable number of jobs in the last three years, men lost way more during the recession (which officially began in December 2007). Men are also prone to work in sectors that are vulnerable swings in the business cycle.

Romney's advisers on women's issues include Bay Buchanan, sister of paleoconservative Pat Buchanan. Like her brother, Buchanan is known for making incendiary assertions. Among her more controversial statements are the suggestion that the nation's "social decay" is the result of the feminist movement, that feminism is rooted in fundamental failures (women don't value marriage and can only be happy outside the home, the sexual revolution made free-loving "alley cats" out of women and the defense of abortion, for example) and breast cancer may be the result of past abortions.

10.57am:Ann Romney has just appeared on Fox News to talk about Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen's comments, and she turns in an upbeat, on-point appearance. She's asked for her gut reaction to Rosen's comments. It turns out she's no more given to moments of nasty passion than her husband.

"She should have come to my house when those five boys were causing so much trouble," Romney laughs. "It wasn't so easy."

Then she pivots into her larger point, that one way is not better than another. "We need to respect the choices that women make. We have to respect women in all those choices they make. … And we have to give a shout-out to all the dads who are at home raising kids."

11.05am: More from Ann Romney's Fox News appearance. Her job here is to show her husband as a man who respects and loves his wife and holds women in general in high regard.

She accomplishes this by saying so, and also by coming across as a frank, intelligent, relatable (!) woman who we can guess would pick well in choosing a mate.

"I will tell you that Mitt said to me more times than you can imagine: 'Ann your job is more important than mine,'" she says. "By the way, Mitt respects women that make those different choices. He listens to a lot of different women."

Then Romney shifts to her campaign boilerplate, the part where she is a mouthpiece for women across the country:

"I want to tell you what women are telling me. Guess what women are talking about? Guess what? They're talking about jobs, and they're talking about the legacy of debt that we're leaving our children. That's what we're hearing. And that's what they're talking about here."

More effective is Romney's answer to Rosen's assertion that staying at home was her choice and she never had to worry about money.

"I know what it's like to struggle," the breast cancer survivor says. "Maybe I haven't struggled as much financially as some people have. But I can tell you that I have had struggle in my life. Mitt and I have compassion for people who are struggling. And that's why we're running." She comes across as sincere. She's helping her husband here.

Ann Romney shares this, however, with her husband: Even when she's being sincere, the language she uses is sometimes so artless – so tinny, so evocative of a computer programmed to carry on conversation – that it rings false:

"You should see how many women he listens to. That's what I love about Mitt. There are so many around him who he respects and admires.... Mitt Romney is a person that admires women and listens to them. And I am grateful that he listens to me and what I am telling him about what women are facing right now."

11.17am: Is the Hillary Rosen scandal a tempest in a teapot? Is this all just Republicans making hay of an innocuous lapse of speech by a political commentator? Or do Rosen's comments expose a real insensitivity among Democrats to the "traditional" family – or a point of conflict between two political philosophies?

For the record here's what Rosen said:

With respect to economic issues, I think actually that Mitt Romney is right that ultimately women care more about the economic well-being of their family and the like. But he doesn't connect on that issue, either. What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues, and when I listen to my wife, that's what I'm hearing. Guess what? His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and why we worry about their future.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments and later we'll discuss the most level-headed and incisive analyses.

11.26am: We're about five minutes away from a Romney campaign conference call on how the president's economy policies are "failing women." Participating will be Sen. Kelly Ayotte, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Rep. Cynthia Lummis.

How will the legislators make the case that President Obama is hurting women? Let's listen in!

"Women have faced massive job losses under this administration," Ayotte says. "I'm really worried about what we're leaving for the next generation in terms of the massive debt we've incurred under this president. ... I know that women, myself included, are concerned about what we're leaving for children."

There is an accidental conflict between the points the Romney camp is making this morning. Those points are: one, it's insulting to say that staying at home doesn't count as work. Two, not enough women are able to get jobs outside the home.

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers on now. She says the "war on women" supposedly being waged by Republicans is a myth, the creation of the Democrats. "What's really going on is a war on reality by the Democrats," she says.

11.49am: Waiting for someone on the Romney conference call to name an Obama policy that has hurt women's economic prospects. They're holding him responsible for jobs lost during the recession. That's an argument to be made. But it's a leap from there to get to "Obama has been bad for women."

The argument the Obama camp has to make, that Romney's policies are antagonistic to women, is more concrete. Romney supports the overturning of Roe v. Wade. He wants to abolish Planned Parenthood. And he doesn't want employers to be required to cover contraception as part of their health insurance.

Those issues aren't the most important for every women voter. But they're part of the reason for that double-digit gap between the president and Romney among women.

11.58am: Let's drop that call for a moment (a moment that lasts forever). The point participants are making is that what Democratic adviser Hilary Rosen said about Ann Romney not working was offensive.

12.27pm: Today marks the sixth anniversary of the Massachusetts health care law that threatened to sink Mitt Romney in the Republican primaries and to undermine one of his main points of attack against the president.

Yesterday a Guardian reporter who shall go unnamed published an analysis of why the Obama campaign might well let the anniversary pass relatively unnoticed. The Obama strategy in the general election is to paint Romney as a benighted conservative whom no Independent in his/her right mind would vote for. Highlighting Romney's moderate record as governor would be counterproductive. So the thinking went.

As if on cue, the Obama camp has released a three-minute video commemorating Romney's work on his state health care law.

The video depicts Romney as having executed an astoundingly brash about-face on health care reform. The MIT expert who helped write both laws is interviewed. Others express disbelief that the candidate has changed his tune so dramatically.

Maybe the Obama camp can make both arguments at once. Romney is an arch-conservative. He is also a political opportunist. Apparently the president's reelection campaign has decided the messages work together.

12.45pm:Mitt Romney has said again and again on the stump that he gleans special insight into the hearts and minds of women voters through the faithful reports of his wife, Ann, after she speaks with them.

Some find the assertion to be balanced on a knife edge between absurd and sexist.

Also, because I can't get over this, please imagine female candidate saying, "My husband talks to men and tells me about their concerns."

1.13pm:From the comments (where we have invited you to take the measure of Rosengate, which you were going to anyway): A point by bloopie2:

Politico has an article by John F. Harris, noting that both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are "exceptionally self-contained, self-disciplined, self-motivated" men, whose minds "gravitate to rationality and logic—both of whom have expressed disdain for the disorder and surliness that pervade modern governance."

His point, it seems, is that for all the bombast and extremism of the current electoral process, come January we will have a President who is neither bombastic nor extreme (in many ways, not all, obviously). On the other hand, some of the Presidents he cites who are not like O and Mitt (Clinton, Johnson) were quite effective in their own ways.

A point well made. One of the sharpest contrasts between the Obama presidency and that of George W. Bush has been in the leaders' rhetorical styles. Where Bush could be pugnacious, Obama projects tranquility; where Bush used the language of "us vs. them," Obama talks a lot of kumbaya. Yet the tenor of national politics has not leavened under Obama. We still all hate each other, it seems.

The conclusion being that the president does not set the tone of the national politics. The question then being: who does?

1.37pm: CNN reports that Hilary Rosen has taken a hitherto unprecedented step in the long saga of her remarks disparaging Ann Romney and their fallout: She has apologized.

Rosen: "I apologize to Ann Romney and anyone else who was offended. "Live with @wolfblitzercnn today on @CNNSitRoom 4p-6p.

So this means it's all over with, right?

2.36pm: Now for today's most likeable, un-likeliest of stories: Newt Gingrich and Fox News are at war over the channel's coverage of the candidate. Gingrich objects that that coverage has been too slim, and favorable to his opponent. Fox characterizes those comments as inaccurate and self-serving. My colleague Ewen MacAskill has the rundown:

Guardian

Fox News has attacked the struggling Republican presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich, after an outburst in which he blamed the network for the failure of his campaign and claimed it was biased in favour of Mitt Romney.

A spokesman for the Fox News Channel, where Gingrich had a contract before hitting the campaign trail, dismissed the accusations and claimed his criticism of the network was motivated by a desire for a job at rival CNN.

Gingrich's outspoken criticism of Fox came at a meeting in Delaware on Wednesday with Tea Party activists.

According to the RealClearPolitics website, which was given access to the meeting, Gingrich said: "I think Fox has been for Romney all the way through. In our experience, Callista and I both believe CNN is less biased than Fox this year.

"We are more likely to get neutral coverage out of CNN than we are of Fox, and we're more likely to get distortion out of Fox. That's just a fact."

Fox hit back in a strongly personal attack. A spokesman said: "This is nothing other than Newt auditioning for a windfall of a gig at CNN – that's the kind of man he is. Not to mention that he's still bitter about the fact that we terminated his contributor contract."

Snap!

2.59pm: Who has yet to comment on Rosengate? Are there any prominent political moms in the audience? Wait, you there, down in front with the big silver hair and pearls. What's your name? Barbara Bush?

Let's hear what Barbara Bush has to say about "Hilary what's-her-name":

Barbara Bush: "Forget it, life is good, women who stay at home are wonderful, women who go to work are wonderful. Whatever."

4.04pm: This is what a campaign circus looks like. BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller has created graphs comparing Twitter mentions over the last day of Ann Romney and Justin Bieber. Bieber, losing, in blue. Click through for a Romney-Rosen comparison.

BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller has taken to Topsy to compare Twitter traffic relating to two newsmakers. Public Domain

4.18pm: Hilary Rosen is back on CNN. Wolf Blitzer is interviewing her. He asks her what she'd say to Ann Romney.

"Mrs. Romney, I applaud your decision to stay at home and raise what are obviously five wonderful boys... [but] This is a distraction that [Romney's] campaign" is promoting.

Blitzer says he didn't hear an apology. Rosen says she already gave one but will again. "Mrs. Romney, I apologize. Working moms, stay at home moms, they're both a lot of work, I know I've done them both."

Rosen is combative. She doesn't look at the camera when she apologizes, and quickly shifts to an attack on Romney for what she says is his bad record on women and the economy.

Blitzer asks Rosen how it feels to be thrown under the bus by Democrats. He reads first lady Michelle Obama's tweet praising stay-at-home moms.

Rosen says she agrees with the first lady, and the rest is just water off her back. "You know, it's politics," Rosen says.

Blitzer keeps going. "It's one thing for Republicans to be slamming you, but all these Democrats..."

Rosen delivers a short critique on the state of modern campaign politics. She calls the pace of modern campaigns "frightening." She admits she's been on the other side of jumping on "misstatements."

5.06pm: It is perhaps late in the day to get into the question of whom Mitt Romney will pick to run as his vice president. Rick Santorum's too unlikeable; Marco Rubio might say no; Jeb Bush doesn't want to ruin his own run (cc: Rubio); Tim Pawlenty's too boring; Mitch Daniels is just more of the same; Rob Portman... well, he might work... like we say, it's late in the day.

But New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, he of the blunt speech and nixed tunnel, was just asked the question, and so let's cover it. Over to you, Robert Costa:

Christie says he doesn't have "personality" for veep.... BUT he is willing to "listen" if the party/Romney needs him

We actually were quite impressed with how athletically Christie beat back the Republican faithful begging him to run for president back in September and October of 2011. His "No" in that instance was much more forceful: "Now is not my time."

5.15pm: Who has yet to comment on Rosengate? Are there any presidents in the audience? Wait, you there, down in front with the double-digit lead among women voters in the 2012 presidential race according to a recent ABC News poll. Barack Obama!

The president took a question about Rosen-gate today from Bruce Aune of ABC's Cedar Rapids affiliate KCRG. Mary Bruce writes up the interview. Click through to check out the video. Here's what the president said:

Here's what I know. That there's no tougher job than being a mom. And, when I think about what Michelle's had to do, and when I think about my own mom, a single mother raising me and my sister, that's work. And so anybody who would argue otherwise probably needs to rethink their statement.

More broadly, I don't have a lot of patience for commentary about the spouses of political candidates. My general view is, those of us in public life, we're fair game. Our families are civilians. I haven't met Mrs. Romney, but she seems like a very nice women who's supportive of her family and supportive of her husband. I don't know that she volunteered for this job, so, you know, we don't need to be directing comments at them. I think me and Governor Romney are going to have more than enough to argue about over the course of this campaign.

5.51pm: We're going to call it a wrap on today's politics live blog; may we express our appreciation for your attention and input. Here's what happened:

•The trespasses of Hilary Rosen, a Democratic strategist, took over the national political discourse like a giant viscous blob of green God-knows-what. What did she do wrong? We're not even sure anymore. Did she say she was sorry? We earnestly believe that she did.

•Ann Romney acquitted herself nicely, in our judgment, in an appearance on Fox News in which she spoke of her husband Mitt Romney's respect for women and lifelong habit of seeking their good counsel. She also opened a Twitter account which has now racked up 25,519 followers after only two Tweets. Those are Sheen numbers.

• The gender gap in salaries and employment in America is shrinking, my colleague Dominic Rushe noted. Last month, the unemployment rate was 8.3% for men and 8.1% for women. In 1979, women ages 25 to 34 earned 68% what their male counterparts did. By 2010, they earned 91%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not there yet, employers.

•Newt Gingrich and Fox News got into a slapfight that we fear cannot but end unprettily. Gingrich said Fox was about as fair and balanced as a two-legged stool (to paraphrase). Fox said Newt was just trying out for a CNN job. Stay tuned.